Just a Toy
by Lucy Hale
Summary: A tale from Eberts point of view. Slash. Eberts/Official, be warned.


Just A Toy

"I know you must have loved me sometime

But now I'm just a toy."

-BNL

People don't tend to notice me. That's been the story of my life. It isn't that they deliberately ignore me, or they meet and then dislike me. 

No, there's something about me. Some hormone I give off, perhaps, that makes them see me, acknowledge my existence, and then forget I was ever there. 

Being invisible like that has both helped and hurt me.

I use invisible in the metaphorical sense, of course. I feel I should specify that, because of who I am and the project I'm involved in. 

But I digress.

It has helped. It has allowed me to learn things, hear things, that people never would have said if they realized I was so close and listening. It's gotten me further in my career, it brought me here to this Agency. 

But it's hurt, too. Though not in ways I could give easy examples of. Most of all, at the risk of sounding petty, it's made me lonely. I'm not the kind of person to make friends easily, and I'm far too awkward to initialize any conversations. 

As a result, I spent a lot of time to myself growing up. Aside from loneliness, I didn't mind too much. Even if no one else in the world knows me, I do. I know myself very well, and I get along with myself. Which is a harder trick than you might think. 

It made being alone easy for me. 

But there's a problem with growing up the way I did. Just as it's true that people can get used to just about anything if they have no alternatives, it's also true that once a person is exposed to an alternative, it's impossible to return to the old life.

Perhaps that sounds confusing. I'm not used to having to put these thoughts into words. It's not as thought people ever ask me to explain. 

Does that sound maudlin? It's not. I've stopped feeling sorry for myself. There's no point in it. 

What I meant was…well, take a child who grew up in an abusive household. That child grows up thinking that's the ways things are. Not happy with it, of course, but used to it. Once that child visits a fellow student's house, or escapes his own home for a time, and sees that there are alternative ways to live…well, it's very hard for that child to allow themselves to go on being hit and yelled at. 

It was much the same for me. I was used to being ignored and unacknowledged. Until someone came along that did acknowledge me.

I can't go into much detail about my first dealings with the Agency. I was brought in because of certain shady dealings I had uncovered with some of my brethren at the IRS -- again, I was overhearing things I should have been kept secret.

The Official took an interest in me because of my obvious competence and over-qualifications for the job I was doing. One thing that has always and will always impress the Official is someone who does his job well.

He decided over the course of the case that I would be more use to the Agency than I would to the IRS. He offered me the job, and I was quick to agree.

You see, the Official offered me something no one else had in my entire life. He spoke to me, and listened to what I had to say. He always knew when I was in the room. He respected my retentive brain and my ability to hold on to every scrap of information I found about most anything at all. 

To him, I was just another person, no more or less deserving of attention and respect that any other.

  
It was shocking to me. A revelation. For the first time, I was being listened to. And what was more, he respected what I had to say.

As a person, the Official intrigued me. He was and is a very strong personality. He is a man whose presence demands people listen and pay attention. In short, he was everything I am not. 

I suppose it's true what they say about opposites attracting. From my side, anyway, I was very attracted. Like a moth to a flame. It wasn't necessarily a physical thing -- the Official is probably no one's idea of the perfect lover. Of course, neither am I, I would expect. Still, he drew me in. 

So I worked for him. And a good thing, too. He was badly in need of someone to handle the less glamorous details of his job. The paperwork, the phone calls. The retention of every single detail and rule that we had to remember just to get through a day at work.

Yes, perhaps I'm a glorified secretary, but I'm indispensable. Which is, again, something I have never been in my entire life. 

He needs me. He has no mind for bureaucracy, for paperwork. He is brilliant, but he is more an agent than a desk man, and he always will be. 

It was strange to be needed. Strange and wonderful. Here was one person who would call to check on me if I was five minutes late in the morning. Here was someone who would go into a panic if I didn't show up. Here was one person who might actually miss me if I was away. 

I suppose I came to adore him. I do. I adore him. Again, I was a moth to flame. Attracted by his fire and mystery. I, the one person here who knows anything about Charles Borden, still know next to nothing. He is an enigma, and one I have no interest in unraveling. I have been closer to him than most anyone. Still, he needs his distance from even me. And I respect that. I prefer it that way. 

When I first joined the Agency, he was cool towards me. He showed me the ropes and then gave me room to work. Then, slowly, he came to respect me. He saw my attributes. He also saw that people dismissed me moments after meeting me. He saw that quality in me that made everyone underestimate me. He caught one or two times where he himself let slip a few secrets after forgetting I was in the room.

Strange thing about him. When he came to recognize this aspect of my character, it gave him even more respect for me. It made him open up and talk to me about things not related to the Agency. He asked about my past, and whether people had been ignoring me my entire life. I told him matter-of-factly that yes, I was used to it. To which he replied, it appeared I was used to using it for my own advantage. 

That surprised me, but he was right. And I agreed.

Again, his respect increased, as well as his interest. 

I'd like to think he was interested in me for the same reason I was interested in him. Because in anything and everything, we were opposites. Intriguingly opposite. 

At any rate, and for whatever reason, we did get closer. I thought I'd made my first friend. But it felt wrong to think of him in that way. It didn't seem to fit. Not only because he was my employer. Of course, it didn't feel right to pigeonhole him as just my boss either.

In fact, I noticed as time went on that I didn't know how to categorize our relationship. We worked together for ten hours a day side by side, almost joined at the hip. After work we would occasionally have dinner, to discuss work or other things. And then it became more than occasional. If something happened and he had to stay late, I would go so far as to drive to his house and cook dinner for us, to be waiting when he got home.

Which was about the time I realized I felt like more of a spouse to him than anything else. It sounds strange, I know, but the way we were two sides of a coin, the way we came to depend on each other, the way I was drawn to him inexorably…it felt like a marriage. 

I became comfortable thinking of us in that way, so when an actual physical element started in our relationship, it wasn't as much of a shock as it could have been.

I won't rehash the private details, because they are not just mine to tell. Needless to say, we were both fairly lonely, and we spent more time with each other than with anyone else. Perhaps it was inevitable. I'm not sure to this day what made him see me in that way. For me it's easy to figure out. My self-esteem was not at its highest, and I started to think that maybe a man as lonely as my employer could actually see something in me. 

As I said earlier, the Official isn't what most would call the ideal lover. He is my senior by a great many years, and not without cause is he nicknamed 'the fat man' by more than one person. That was a plus for me. It made me more easily believe that he might settle for a nonentity such as myself. 

So, details aside, it happened, just another ever-changing detail in our complex relationship. No more or less important than anything else, really. 

Or so I thought. 

Then something happened to make me realize that I had started taking our closeness, our intimacy, for granted. 

The Agency acquired an invisible man. The actual, physically invisible variety, and not my more subtle version of it. 

You're no doubt familiar with the details. And I'm sure what you're thinking now. But in all actuality, it wasn't Darien Fawkes himself who was the problem.

See, one thing I didn't take into account during my opposites-attracting dealings with the Official is that people of like minds tend to attract as well. Suddenly I watched the man I was so smitten with develop interest in another.

Not Fawkes. His partner. His flawed, short, balding, hyper, sarcastic, argumentative, bitter partner.

Of all the people in the world, Robert Hobbes was the last I would have suspected would be a threat to my relationship. I had no reason to think so. He had worked for the Agency for a while, mostly out-of-country, doing spy jobs and field work, staying far away from headquarters. That was the only way he and the Official got along at all. 

But then it was decided that he was the perfect partner for our new, unreliable I-Man. He was shipped home, and stayed. And the Official began slowly to realize that he wasn't just a good agent, he was the best we had. Despite his psychological faults, he had a sharp mind and almost stunning abilities. If it weren't for his mental crack-ups he would have been in the top ranks of the FBI, where he had started out years ago. 

The Official and his respect for people who were good at their jobs began looking at Hobbes as more than a joke. Oh, he maintained his distant, cool attitude towards the man, but I noticed. They might have still argued over callings cards and parking validation, but whenever the Agency's best was required, Hobbes was sent for. Whether Fawkes was with him or not. The Official's eyes began reflecting genuine amusement at the unorthodox things Hobbes would come up with. He was showing genuine admiration for the things Hobbes and Fawkes accomplished together. 

Don't think for an instant that this led to anything between the two men. Of course it didn't. I'm not sure Hobbes would be open to any sort of relationship with a man, and if he was, Darien Fawkes was always a foot away, batting his eyelashes at his unseeing partner. 

I never had any misgivings about an affair. But it doesn't take the beginning of some affair to cause the end of a relationship like ours. In this case, it took only the interest. 

He has never told me directly, and I'm sure he never will. But I know the Official better than anyone has ever known him. I can read his mind most days. 

And I know he is not a man who will carry on sleeping with one person if he is so obviously interested in another. Even though the Official knows better than anyone that he will never be anything to Hobbes but The Fat Man, Charles Borden is too honorable to lead me on. 

Yes, he's honorable. He lies, he cheats, he cons. He has to, to give this ragtag little Agency a fighting chance in a government full of high-powered agencies just like it. Where it counts, though, he is honorable. Even the knowledge that he could be attracted to someone else so easily must have made him think it was wrong to continue with me. 

Which I understand. I almost agree with it. I'm not sure. It sounds pathetic, but at this point I'm not sure if I would rather him still be with me while wishing I was someone else. 

The end of our little liaison was as quiet and gradual and anticlimactic as the start of it had been. At first, we simply stopped spending any time together outside of work. And then, slowly, his attitude towards me changed.

Which is the worst thing of all. Which is why I feel I have to vent to someone, even though I have never told anyone anything about my life.

Because it wasn't just the physicality that ended. That would have been easier to deal with. Much easier. Instead, his entire view of me seemed to change. Perhaps he was seeing me through other eyes. Through Hobbes' eyes? I'm not sure. Hobbes certainly has nothing like respect for me. 

And now, neither does my employer. Oh, he wouldn't ever doubt that he needs me. I'm a tool, a piece of equipment like any other he keeps in his office. He turns to me now for the vital bits of information he's sure I will spew out at his will. And that's all.

Today, I received confirmation of that. If I needed any other confirmation, which I didn't. Today, he spoke three little words in jest that had more affect on me than any other words in my life. They weren't words I hadn't thought about myself time and again, and it was certainly nothing new to my ears. But coming from him, directed towards Bobby Hobbes, as a shared joke at my expense…

I'm like that abused child. For a while, I was shown a different way of living. I was shown that it's possible for me to act and be treated like any other normal person. And then, just as I was getting used to it and taking it for granted, I was thrown back into my old life with nothing but a memory to hold on to. 

Oh, I know it sounds melodramatic of me. I know those words today should have slid off my back. They slipped out during a conversation that went on a split second after without sign they had even been spoken.

Still, it hurts. It relegates me back into the bottom of the pecking order. It puts me back into the realm of the unnoticed. 

And if he notices, he doesn't care. Why would he? If he sees that my spirit is waning again, he doesn't say. If he realizes that I'm feeling unacknowledged, slowly sinking back into invisibility, what would he say?

The same thing he said today, I suppose. The cold, hard truth. 

"He's already invisible."


End file.
